WHY Could 5G be DANGEROUS to Aircraft?!
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- Опубліковано 26 січ 2022
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During the last few weeks there has been a flood if reporting about airlines cancelling flights into the US out of fear of problems relating to the launch of 5G networks. Why is the airline industry reacting this way and what could happen to an aircraft if there WAS interference witb 5G signals? Thats what we will cover in todays video. Enjoy!
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Below you will find the links to videos and sources used in this episode. Enjoy checking them out!
Sources
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FCC Building: Ser Amantio di Nicolao
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal...
FCC Logo: U.S. Government
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal...
FAA Logo: U.S. Government
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal...
Flight Path Graphic: RTCA
leehamnews.com/2022/01/18/us-...
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In my opinion, FAA Is increasingly growing cautious about safety concerns(which, honestly, is an appreciable thing). The last thing they'll ever want is to have another incident after the 737-MAX!
Pity as it's not been an issue.anywhere else in the world where it's already been rolled out for at least two years. So the FAA knows better 'how'?
And I would suggest BECAUSE of the failures surrounding the Max.
However this should never have been an issue. The FAA has obviously been asleep at the wheel.
5G is not something that has come as a surprise, whether you realise it or not, they’re actually already looking at improvements for 6G mobile telephony.
Every new mobile telephony system uses higher bands, for exactly the reasons Petter outlines in this video.
Therefore 5G using these bands was entire predictable many years ago, and the FAA should have started looking into and testing it then.
@@andyrob3259 As mentour said the difference between the the bands used is much greater in Europe than it is in the US, which has a huge influence on the interference.
While the FAA might be slower than they could be I believe they should still check this thoroughly and completely separate from the EASA, even if the there was no difference between the systems. Also the argument about no issue in the last two years could be made about the 737 MAX as well, it was certified and first delivered in 2017, but it took until late 2018 and quite a few delivered aircraft until the first crash. The last thing you want is a problem during an auto land, most likely in IFR conditions which could potentially lead to a fatal crash.
They took too long with the 1st MAX crash..And nobody was found responsible even after breach of regulations
@@andyrob3259 This is discussed at 11:44 in the video
something else to remember is that the frequencies used for 5G in the rest of the world are slightly lower than the ones auctioned off in the US. Secondly in Europe and elsewhere the 5G towers are not allowed to operate near Approach flightpaths. So the FCC/Telecom claims are not really honest
True, true. I did mention the increased margins in the video but the output signals are also weaker and not placed on approach paths.
@@MentourNow Not in Japan though, NTT Docomo's band is even closer that US carriers bands, it's at 100MHz. The ENRI tested and documented this on ICAO's website. They stated that as long as there's a 60MHz guard band and there's no base station with a 400m radius from the centre of approach then there's no issue.
Boeing, Rockwell Collins and Honeywell were happy with the above in Japan so I've got no idea what the FAA are so worried about.
Typical of the US wanting to be different or incompatible with anyone else!
@@millomweb cell phones use what are called "software defined radios" so from an equipment point of view, it isn't a big beal
@@millomweb 5G is a worldwide standard. The difference is in the implementation of the rollout. So, curb your knee-jerk anti-American nonsense.
Keeping it simple - I'd tend to go with the Captain Bryce McCormick [American Airlines Flight 96 - the "Windsor Incident"] philosophy; "OK, it'll NEVER happen, so what do I do when it does?" A very, very wise man.
So don't be lazy and use frequencies with less overlap? C-band was auctioned off for communications.
It’s unbelievable that airliners are being pranged because an autothrottle is misbehaving ……. But it IS happening …… and what’s the mentality behind passengers selecting out of flight mode with their devices INFLIGHT ……
@@stumackenzie8492 Well, it's been shown thoroughly and exhaustively, for decades, that cellphones do not actually interfere with aircraft avionics. Most people haven't bothered with airplane mode for the last decade or more.
Do you wear a tinfoil hat when you drive by a radio tower? No, because you know better and it's a waste of your time. Your grandma telling you that it might cook your brain doesn't change anything.
I think the most important issue, and quite well highlighted here, is that radio altimeter makers have forever assumed they do not need to guard their instruments against interference. A bandpass filter from 4.2 to 4.4 GHz that allows separation of 200 MHz is not complicated.
And indeed, under pressure, the FAA has finally determined that virtually all Boeing and Airbus altimeters can actually do that.
Exactly. I wonder how hard it would be to retrofit better bandpass filter. On tv receivers that are working on frequencies that are close to lower frequency mobile networks (~800Mhz) it is done regularly and these are definitely much closer than 200Mhz apart. For 100M+ USD aircraft this must be a negligible cost. Obviously they must test this properly, but really - bandpass is a century old tech.
would it be complicated to retrofit a bandpass into existing radar altimeters? Is it as simple as just adding a few capacitors or something along those lines? Or would it require installing newer versions of radar altimeters into the planes that are affected?
Exactly, it is incredibly head-in-sand regulation to just assume that you have a frequency range, and that no one else is going to want to use a frequency range right next to it.
Must be a linear phase filter due to the FM CW “chirp” that RA’s use.
@@petrkubena It is really easy, it kan even be an external filter put in the antenna line.
The question is.. how good are the filters in cellphone masts and what does te spectrum look like in reality not in the lab !
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Glad u enjoy aviation danno
Okay
@@behindthen0thing Hi...thanks...I just subscribed to your channel. Are you a pilot?
I appreciate how you break down complex issues into understandable, comprehensive components.
So, I'm an ATC here in the US. Now, I'd like to preface the following with this: 1) coincidence is not causality, 2) I do not have definitive evidence that 5G is the cause for the following incidents, and 3) I do not speak for the FAA. The following are just my *personal* observations.
Since the rollout of 5G this month, our airliner and corporate jet arrivals have reported a number of false warnings. It'll be clear, beautiful weather, with no one else around, nothing but flat terrain, and the aircraft at a standard 1500 foot altitude on 5 mile final. The aircraft will suddenly report getting a traffic or terrain warning. There doesn't seem to be a strict pattern to it. We've had it happen with 737s, A320s, Falcon jets, etc. Multiple airlines. Some days we'll get multiple reports. Some days we'll get none.
My main concern, personally, is that this increase in false warnings will lead to a "cry wolf" scenario, where pilots and controllers will start ignoring the warnings after so many false reports. Then they won't respond if there's a real issue.
Again, it may just be coincidence, and the timing of the rollout does not directly indicate that 5G is the cause. That's for the technical people to investigate and determine causality. We of course log and report the incidents, so that hopefully someone will get to the bottom of it. If you're flying, and you see something weird, please tell ATC so that it can be reported and sent up the chain. Problems don't get fixed unless people make noise.
Or they get treated horribly and nothing happens, as was my case for caring about human lives more than money.
I have had bizarre ADS-B collision warning alerts as well in the past week, even though, as a microwave engineer with a lot of experience, cannot see any logical technical connection with the 5G implementation, at all. It's happened four times in the vicinity of WADDS intersection (east of Reno, KRNO) and once on approach to Kingman (KIGM) in Arizona. The collision alerts are always same altitude-same direction, coincident location alerts. If I weren't on beta blockers, I would have panicked each time.
Very interesting. How many of these false warning did you report say 2 years ago. What I want to come to is, is there a drastic increase?
@@saratogapilot6100 IMD?
This is my problem. I see a lot of reports and anecdotes about "possible" or "alleged" problems. This is an engineering issue and can only be solved by engineering testing. Why hasn't that been done by now?
This is similar to what happened with 4G: turns out an awful lot of very shoddy marine radars had been sold that were so badly designed they received 2.6 GHz (4G mobile) as well as the 2.7 GHz they were supposed to. There was a big delay while owners were told to replace them or fit filters.
So again with 5G. Seems a lot of radio altimeters (on 4.4 Ghz) are again so shoddy they don’t filter out usage on 3.8 GHz.
Just to be clear, the frequency bands do NOT overlap, there is a very wide ‘guard band’ between the two. The fault is entirely in the radio altimeters that have cut corners in their front-end filter and are hence receptive to frequencies used by others: in this case, 5G.
There has been a barney in the US with multiple threats of lawsuits, but the fact is the radio altimeters are defective, and the fault should be fixed at the cost of the dodgy avionic sharks wot sold them.
The FCC has lost patience, but the airlines, the radio altimeter makers and their hired NPC in the FAA are desperate to blame everyone else.
This from the lot that brought you the self-certified Boeing 737 Nose-plant edition.
So it’s not a problem of 5G than rather of defect aircraft equipment. Fix your lousy equipment.
Most UK 5G hasn’t started on this band yet, using 3.4 GHz and 700 MHz.
Every consumer device in this country has a little sticker on it somewhere that says it doesn't emit any harmful signals, and can deal with any harmful signals it receives. Why is important airplane equipment, years in testing and development, not held to the same standard? And the difference in frequency between the 5G range and the altimeter range is actually larger than the altimeter range as a whole, so why are altimeters able to receive so far outside their target range?
I grew up around commercial aviation and really love it to this day (for a long, long time) and have seen it evolve into what it is today (the first aircraft I flew in was a DC-3, if that tells you anything). So, I know pilots are a very special and intelligent group of men and women, but I really appreciate the vast knowledge that you share with us in your videos, especially in this one. Thank you for doing what you do and letting me live the life of a pilot, even if only vicariously! Keep doing what you are doing in the air and over the airwaves!
I'm quite confused why the FAA et al are getting so antsy about it. This issue has already come up and been sorted in Europe, UK and Japan.
The ENRI has a report that was published on ICAO's website. Japan actually has 5G bands closer to the altimeter frequency that the US. The recommendation from the ENRI was that a 60MHz guard band and making sure base stations are 400m away from the approach is sufficient for radio altimeters to function correctly.
Both Rockwell Collins and Honeywell were happy with the above. So I really don't understand what the issue is in the US unless the FAA and it's other stakeholders are trying to get telecommunications to pay for altimeter upgrades.....
Ignorance is bliss.... ehh
That certainly seems to be the reason to me. I can't seem to convince my US aviation friends that the problem is because of design deficiencies in the radalt front ends. If the 5G spectrum was used for something else with more peak power - radar for example, the problem would be absolutely massive and yet the answer, as now, if for the aviation industry to bring their radalt fleet up to reasonable standard.
Perhaps the carriers need to hire the noted RF consultant Hunter Biden to get this cleared up.
Great explanation, now when the colleagues brings up this 5g issue at the coffee break next time we’ll be able to answer them!
Awesome! That’s what I was hoping to achieve with this video. 💕
😇
Not really. 5G is up and running in many countries and there is no issue at airports. He addresses none of that.
@@andyrob3259 Yes, but the frequencies are lower than those in the US, secondly they are not allowed to operate in approach flightpaths. so those claims are frankly bullshit.
@@andyrob3259 He brings it up at the end of the video, at 11:40.
one thing not mentioned here is that the radio altimeters can be swapped out for ones with a tighter frequency filter so that way it won't interfere even though 5g is close to the frequency
But that would cost the airlines money. They hate spending money 😩😭
FAA - Always assume everything is dangerous, until proven otherwise
FCC - Always assume everything is safe, until proven otherwise
This is all the FCC's fault. The Federal Candy Company doesn't have the budget to research the potential problems and enforce the laws.
@@BlairMaynard Actually they don't have to. Assuming that the airplane instruments are well designed, and considering the FAA policies of assuming everything is dangerous until proven safe, it would be strange if they weren't well designed, a 200MHz gap between 5G frequencies and altimeter frequencies should be more than adequate for safe cooperation.
As such the so called 'safety first approach' is ridiculous. There is no safer plane than the plane that stands on the ground, unfueled. If 'safety first' is paramount, then there would be no airplanes at all
@@koppadasao 200MHz would be more than adequate for a radio altimeter designed today and built today, knowing that level of filtering it needs to do. Considering when they were designed, they made the filters handle what existed, which was nothing. Since making them with a narrower bandwidth is more expensive that wasn't done.
The ONLY reason that there is push back from the FAA's normal and proper SOP is because of the 81 billion dollars the government got. And after the MCAS debacle the FAA SHOULD be careful. Until it is properly and thoroughly tested it is criminal to use the new freqs.
The general "rule" has always been that new devices cannot cause interference with existing devices. That is being ignored.
@@HitechProductions Actually 200MHz should be enough for radio altimeters build in the last 40-50 years, or so, considering that the 4-4.2 GHz range has been in use for decades, without interference.
@@koppadasao ua-cam.com/video/hlyPjLIFUGE/v-deo.html
A complex issue, very well explained. Guessing the issue will not prove significant, but clearly it is important to be assured of exactly how a significant technology change may impact safety. Better to know than to blindly go forward without knowing the data and impact of choices.
So agreed! I heard this on Big News and they only dumb-down yet also overexaggerate everything, leaving me shouting, "WAIT... BUT *_WHY!!!_*" lol
Now I know why 😎👍
@UCFbAAoGRrjNjKAUtpzlA8Hw No, but as Mentour explained the USA has auctioned frequency bands closer to the Radio altimeter frequencies than any other country in the world. That is what makes the difference. So the 5G technology is not the problem at all. It is the FCC's choice to open these frequencies (Because: $$$).
More like not keeping up with technology for decades causing problems.
Aircraft should have been triangulating off of cell and GPS decades ago.
Reminds me of old mainframe computer owners suddenly being surprised when they can't upgrade anymore, and have to start over from scratch.
Or a piece of industrial hardware that needs a very specific version of Windows 95, running on very specific desktop hardware.
SpaceX doesn't have this problem. And they land 20 story tall rocket boosters on boats, with a hover slam.
This whole mess is due to CORRUPTION. The FCC is totally CORRUPT. The "auctioning" of a PUBLIC RESOURCE is a total abrogation of proper legal precedent.
@@jtjames79 Aircraft can't triangulate height from GPS
There are whole frequency bands that are less than 50 mhz. And the FCC reduced allowable frequency width by 50% expressly to limit frequency bleed over. This frequency narrowing occurred 8 or 9 years ago and caused problems for many public safety organizations, potentially putting public safety personnel's lives in jeopardy because radios could no longer work inside many structures. The FAA has had more than 10 years to work on this issue, but decided to drag their feet on the issue. Now they are blaming the telecommunications companies when the FAA had ample time to prepare for the frequency change.
There's a lot of fear being spread without a lot of facts. The idea that somehow radio frequency communication and range finding are not well understood technologies right now is ridiculous. Sure, each implementation of these devices needs to be considered to ensure compliance, but these aircraft developers/testing agencies clearly dragged their feet on doing the testing here.
It sounds similar to an Apple issue with the Catalina OS removing support for 32 bit games/applications. The developers had so much time to pivot but they did not pivot towards the change. But the question to ask is why Apple wanted to make the change in the first place? They have the new ARM chips in laptops and they have a different direction they want to pivot with the entire company as a whole. These kinds of issues exist on a private level and federal level. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who we blame in this scenario the FAA or FCC. Bureaucracy will slow anything down in any organization private or public. Companies had years to stop polluting and they continue to do so. These situations are all too familiar.
I fly on a medical helicopter and the radar altimeter is pretty important to us, not just on take offs a landings but frequently throughout the flight (especially at night). We frequently fly right past cell towers so I would guess that we have a higher chance of dealing with interference from them. Hopefully it's a non-issue.
Yet another example of potential interference. But, apparently, the FCC thinks that 82 billion dollars is worth a few lives. :(
You don't need 5G to screw up... Bavarian radio station Antenne Bayern uses FM radio with center frequency 107.7 from transmission tower Hochries (with an ERP of 50kW), which is about 60-70km shortest distance away from Munich Airport. Munich Airport uses 108.3 for ILS 26L. The bad thing about FM is, the louder the song is, the larger the bandwidth of the sidebands gets. So the channel needed to use limiters to keep loudness below a certain level so the FM sidebands of their radio channel do not interfere with the ILS localizer.
But this 5G thing can really screw it up. I am working in the field of satellite transmission and know the effect that the radio altimeter can have on C-Band downlinks, although C-Band uses 3.8-4.2GHz and radio altimteter starts at 4.2. You need to use a lowpass or bandpass filter (radar reject filter) to remove the radar signal from the spectrum before the LNB, otherwise the radar will create harmonics of it's frequency in the spectrum that screw up the whole C-band downlink. Similarly, I share the concerns that this also works the other way around when a 5G transmitter blows full power into the receiving part of the radio altimeter even if not at the same frequency, but just by being close enough, when the input filter of the radio altimeter is not narrow enough
Thank you very much for this information!
To my knowledge frequency modulaation bandwidth is a factor of the frequency of modulated signal, not amplitude.
200 MHz is a huge guard band however. No filter should have a problem blocking that.
There is a huge buffer between a 107.7 mhz. commercial radio broadcast and a 108.3 mhz. receiver. Commercial allocations for broadcast radio are 200khz. wide. Transmitters operate well within the bounds of this range regardless of modulated intelligence and harmonics are not an issue with regards to those frequencies.
At 60-70 km power wont overload the front end of receivers so brute force isn't even a consideration.
The 5 G spectrum is some 200 Mhz. lower that the radio altimeter and not on an even harmonic. Not only that but "full power" is pretty low and atmospheric attenuation is high.
I could be wrong but I can't see 5G presenting much of a problem for the radio altimeter on aircraft.
"when the input filter of the radio altimeter is not narrow enough" That is key. Get a monkey to design the input filter and don't be surprised if your kit is garbage. I do not believe they are that bad but some clueless idiot is extrapolating from almost zero knowledge and getting equally clueless results.
“Existing 4G base stations would be retrofitted into being 5G base stations as well” Nope. Not as well. Instead. AT&T informs me the reason my 4G phone’s not getting signal in my house anymore is because they already converted the closest tower to 5G. The only solution they offered was buy a new phone. 😡
There are two different things going on here and due to the industry's insistence on using marketing lingo, people rightfully don't get it. 5G is basically 4G with extra efficient encoding that isn't backwards compatible, but is a software change for a great deal of 4G carrier equipment. A given cell site can broadcast either 5G or 4G on given frequencies, and AT&T in particular has been known to call the "tower is 5G capable but we're running in 4G mode to serve the most users" situation 5G, much like they did with both 3G and 4G. Okay, so that's super confusing, and probably on purpose.
The other thing going on is that 4G's voice network was originally on the 3G network, and many 4G devices are incapable of using Voice over LTE (VoLTE) either because the carrier refuses to allow it on their device or because the device doesn't support it. In the latter case, the phone actually uses the 2G or 3G network to connect and register with the network, whereas in the former case, it natively does 4G but connects voice calls over 3G.
If your 4G device uses the 2G or 3G network to register, and they upgraded the tower, that's probably the issue. AT&T is one of the worst carriers in terms of VoLTE and 5G capable adoption, so they simply cannot entirely shut off 4G - they have to offer both services on different channels/frequencies. But, they have already begun shutting off 2G, so your 4G capable phone may simply be unable to register with the service you have access to because your phone uses 2G to register.
For comparison, this issue largely doesn't exist on T-Mobile because they had the foresight to acquire Sprint and their spectrum (this is why they didn't buy any of this spectrum at auction). They put their VoLTE-capable devices on a dedicated band with cell site hardware capable of a software upgrade to 5G. All 3G devices will fall back to 2G (these are compatible in a way that 4G/5G are not), so T-Mobile can broadcast a 2G/3G signal on one band, a 4G signal on their original 4G band, and a 4G band they will switch over to 5G on the new band. Once they can see enough 5G adoption in a given market, they can simply switch on 5G on the Sprint spectrum, and the incompatible devices will just use the other 4G band (potentially registering with 2G or 3G) transparently. AT&T and Verizon don't have the spectrum to make this possible, and their goal in acquiring this spectrum that interferes with radio altimeters was to implement something similar. But they had already started rolling out 5G, so that required them to shut off one of the other incompatible services, and that was frequently 2G (preventing older 4G devices from registering with the network). In some situations, they might have replaced 4G with 5G, like if they have a contract with the county to provide emergency communications over 2G or 3G and they simply do not have the equipment to run 3 different services in your area.
You'r phone has to support Band 12 and Band 14 for LTE, Band 5 no longer suffice (low
I am in long island, my phone literally did not work.
It is simply incredible the gov and the FCC and the trade commission allowed such a thing - we are not talking GSM, we are talking of a technology vast majority of cell phone still use!
Yeah, they can either double the prices by adding more towers, or they can replace all the spectrum with 5G and use it more efficiently.
They will give you a really basic 5G phone if this happened to you, but it won't be very fancy. But yeah, they have to decide if consumers would hate doubling their monthly bill more or forcing them to buy a new phone more. And usually they would rather buy a new phone that's already nicer than pay more per month.
I think they were not telling you the truth. In southern Maine 4G is using the 2100 mHz band, 1900 mHz, and 700 mHz, the only band of the four that my phone supports that I never see the phone go to is 800 mHz. In southern NH and in MA 4G is on 700 and 1900. I'm assuming 2100 and 800 are 5G. ATT has shut off 3G. It sounds more like they want to sell you a new phone.
Being a government bureaucracy the FAA was taking their sweet time figuring this out and now they are in panic mode. Shocking.
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Thank you Dustin! You can help this new channel by sharing it on social media 🙏🙏
In terms of radio frequency utilization, 200MHz guard band is humongous. Most guard bands in use are a lot narrower in nature, and they work fine because there are filters to ignore noise outside the frequency band.
The problem here is certain older radio altimeters may not have proper frequency filters in place, and therefore may be subject to interference way outside the frequency bands they are supposed to be using. What’s inexplicable is that FAA could have tested this in real life but has been sitting on their hands for years.
Also, when initially asked for how much guard band is needed, the aviation industry told them 100MHz. They doubled it just to be safe..
At the frequencies involved (ca. 4 GHz) a 200 MHz guard band isn't all that much. It all depends on the steepness of the filter's skirts. The filters in the radio altimeters were more than adequate for the RF environment as it existed at the time of their design. Saying the manufacturers should have designed and implemented better filters is just blaming them for not being able to predict the future.
@@johnopalko5223 Sure, there is some level of truth to not being able to predict the future. However, it’s not like those bands were unallocated and/or being reserved to be used for aviation purposes. The band currently repurposed had been previously allocated for satellite comms and therefore it’s a bit naive to expect no interference because the actual previous usage was sparse and low power levels.
In fact, after testing it’s turning out that most commonly used altimeters just work fine, because they most likely did the right thing to do instead of doing not enough and hoping the best.
Also, when the reallocation happened it didn’t take the satellite operators that long to update their filters in their terminals.
@@toukoaozaki You also need to remember that the process involved in certifying new equipment for use on aircraft is a long and expensive one too.
@@toukoaozaki also, if filters were implemented on aircraft to work in the USA then those filters would not work elsewhere and may actually cause issues with other systems when flying in Europe for example.
@@daic7274 not true. Tighter bandwidth front-end filters exclude near-band interference. In EU, 5G is further away, so no degradation there.
It's probably better to listen to the FAA now than wait for the NTSB to give a final report after a real problem.
When the FAA are spouting non sense then I would just ignore them. They are just annoyed that they took their eye off the ball and did not ask to get involved early enough. Don't play their politics, just get the FAA to compensate all the telecoms operators multiple millions per day whilst they fool around until they approve the installations.
@@mbak7801 I don't necessarily agree that this is a political dummy spit: there are potential concerns regarding the meshing of the technologies, but I do agree that the FAA have egg on their face for not being on top of this issue a lot sooner. This should have been dealt with when the 5G standard was codified, not when it went into production. No one at the FAA could honestly say that it never occurred to them that it would be a problem before now, it's not like 5G is something that has been flying under the radar (pardon the expression)
Frankly, and I allow myself to state this as I work in designing telecommunications hardware, this is a 100% aviation problem.
Telecommunications itself is super strictly regulated and you cannot 'leak' outside your assigned band above a certain signal strength.
You will not get certification for your basestation or modem chip.
So if any radio altimeter does pick up 5G signals it has a fundamental problem with its filtering and signal processing and should be immidiately upgraded or exchanged. Also, the frequencies do look close together, in fact there is a pretty hefty guardband in between, as the auction has stopped at 3.98GHz, so there are several MHz of space until the radio altimeter frequencies begin.
In my view this is clearly the fault of the FAA, they should've dealt with checking and certifying Altimeter hardware years ago. Within the industry it has been VERY clear for years that 5G would be using very high frequency bands, as has Wifi in the 5GHz range, above the altimeter frequencies.
So in my view the TelCo providers are doing the right thing by pushing this through now and the FAA should stop shifting the problem but instead actively solve it.
I hope this gives some insight.
Similar thing happened with GPS and bands licensed by Ligado. I lost track of what happened to them, but for the last decade they have been battling with GPS vendors who basically installed very suboptimal, not-state-of-the art filters on their inputs. To me it's a little dickish - like a guy lazily taking two parking spaces because he got there before the event was crowded, and then arguing with everybody instead of moving his damn car.
I'm just curious, in this band are you using the standard 3 sector arrangement that is normally used? 10cm seems like a rather long wavelength for electronic beamforming without using large antennas. Is Mentour right about the use of electronic beamforming? Will there be any 4G activity in that band? One last question, do you use separate rx and tx antennas or do you use the same antenna for both using the appropriate filters? The aviation community needs to remember that that 200 mHz of guard band is worth a LOT of money. It's going to be tempting to put that spectrum to use. The guard band seems excessively wide.
So two different US government agencies didn't communicate properly and acted at cross purposes?? It would be comical if it wasn't so common.
@Dan P, 5G and its frequency allocations in the U.S. have not been a secret. The FAA knew about it many years ago, but just procrastinated and dragged their feet until it was a crisis.
very easy to sit back on your cynics throne isn't it? this is where a genius really shines.
@@gregknipe8772, who's the genius here?
@@Johnny.Fedora your mom
Thank you for covering this. A lot of us don't know why and this is really helpful info.
That’s why I did this. This channel is all about trying to explain what’s going on in the aviation world in a sensible way.
Great explanation! I'll be sure to share it with family as they were wondering about this like me. Love your channel!
Good info as always! I especially love the graphic of the landing aircraft with that peculiar airline livery. Lol. Keep up the good work Democr...er.. Mentour Now!
Perfect explanation! One interesting thing I’ve learned from a friend who got his commercial pilot’s license here in the us recently is he actually used an app on his phone to help navigate while flying sometimes, though not commercial jets 😅 he pretty much told me that the risk of not having a phone or two in airplane mode is almost not there. But as stated in this video, when 300 phones aren’t in airplane mode who knows, the risk is much higher. Also, out of curiosity I’ve not had my phone in airplane mode for periods of time on flights and honestly you don’t really get any reception at cruising altitude anyway, and it actually wastes your battery searching for a signal so why bother. I don’t have a 5g phone though. All in all, it’s a bunch of unknowns. In the aviation industry, this kind of unknown factor is not a good thing. More definitely needs to be learned on this subject. And I’ll stick to using Southwest’s complimentary wifi to text 😂
Yes, depending on technology (such as CDMA vs TDMA for instance, which determines the identification model at play) phones tend to switch frequencies among the allotted frequencies a lot. But in an edge band like 5G, having more phones in a given area or cell increases the chances of it selecting an interference channel in an identification model that's more of a first come first serve basis. TL;DR: I'm agreeing with your friend, as a computer tech with some electronics and radio experience.
Very interesting video petter very well explained well done keep up your good work I love your channel you explain what happened very well
Thank you Mick! Glad you found it interesting!
Fascinating, as always! Tack så mycket :D
Another top of the line video from Petter. Thank you. Best explanation by far. And super well produced. Impressive.
Very well explained Petter.👌
Thank you!
Hey mentour, im super excited for the next episode of accident investigation. Is it coming out this weekend?
You saved me a lot of reading Mentour
Appreciate what you're doing here
Just the fact, that they now have to think about that tells me, as a technical person, that there were major oversights, when the frequencies were reserved for aviation in the first place and when the devices were initially tested.
I am a licensed amateur radio operator, licensed by the FCC. I am licensed on all kinds of bands, modes, frequencies. The separation between these two frequency bands is amazingly large in radio. It should not be a problem at all. If anything, upgrade a $1,000 radio in the aircraft for a narrower band transmit/receive frequency. By the way, when the FCC auctioned off these frequencies, they stole frequency bands from the amateur radio community--the folks who brought you AM/FM/Satellite/Cell Phone/WiFi signals. Yeah. I'm still kind of pissed about it.
I would love to see 747’s in the air again.
True
I love this channel. Good content all the time. Thanks Mentour.
As enlightening & entertaining, as always! Many Thanks! :)
The 2 telecoms lobbied VERY hard to get the frequency and they did not want ANY testing done so they could roll out 5G faster. Their lobbyists pointed out that it was not an issue in Europe but they implemented 5G differently - something the lobbyists never mentioned of course.
There is no reason what so ever that 200 MHz buffer isn't enough. For wifi the buffer is 15 MHz and it works fine. There is barely a need to test since any radar built to spec will obviously not be impacted. The problem is airlines operating radars out of spec. This isn't the telecom industries responsiblity. I can't sue AT&T if I have a really bad wifi antenna that picks up cell phone signals.
@@nnnnzzzz9172 Lol, try running a wifi in big apartment buildings. The interference is massive. So no, it doesn't work fine, it's just hundreds of people are not going to die when your phone loses wifi connection.
The airline industry is at fault here. The Telecom industry paid for spectrum, billions of dollars, and it's spectrum that they have every right to use. Their own equipment has to make sure that it doesn't get interfered with by radio altimeters, and radio altimeters should make sure their equipment is not interfered with by 5g.
This only affects some airplanes made by Boeing who used really really inexpensive cheap components in order to save a buck. Modern airplanes and almost all Airbus and some others are not even affected. Technically, the airline industry approved radio altimeters that were out of spec.
This is like if you've been using your neighbor's vacant driveway for the past 2 years, and he sells it to a new owner who moves in and tells you to stop using it.
The airline industry asked for 100 MHz guard buffer, and the FCC gave them 200 just to be safe, and they proceeded to see that the spectrum next to it was not being used and decided they didn't need to make all of their radio altimeters up to specification. If they had installed a part that cost about $18 more, then this would not be an issue, just like it's not an issue on almost all planes made after 1980 and on any radio altimeter that was certified after 1956.
It is not on the Telecom industry, the burden does not fall on them. As long as they do not broadcast outside of their frequency, it's not their problem.
The airline industry needs to either shut the fuck up and upgrade and fix their equipment and make it up to the spec that has been here since 1960, or they need to purchase the spectrum that they have been stepping on for a while. They want billions of dollars worth of spectrum for free, if they want to use it, they'll have to pay for it like the Telecom industry did.
@@pilotavery So Avery, I guess you would expect that CB radio and HAM radio should go the way of the dodo too? Because "Billions of dollars" and all...
@@vibratingstring no, and you should stop comparing apples to oranges.
It would be different if someone just randomly started broadcasting on top of an unused military frequency. Sure it's unused but it's not allocated to them. That's what this is equivalent to. The aviation industry is expecting that because they decided to save a buck and assume that other frequencies will always remain empty.
I watched some other videos and read one article about the issue. No one had so well explained and made it so simple to understand the issue than this video, even for someone like me who has no link to the Aviation Industry. Not only I understood much better the Issue but also have a better Idea about the 5G.
It is ironic that 2 Government entities don't communicate enough about COMMUNICATION file. Thank you Captain.
Thank you for watching. Explaining things in a simple way is what I’m trying to do. 😀
@@MentourNow so is this why Boeing's latest planes are still being evaluated for airworthiness?
Great explanation! We flew the FIRST day that 5g was turned on in late January here in the US and did have concerns during the flight. Going to refer our subscribers to your excellent video when our story is uploaded. Thanks for such a professional review of the 5 g subject! Full support from us!
Thank you guys! Glad you liked it
5g has been running for years, it's nothing new. 5G can run on any of the cellular bands.
Thank You Very Much Petter for this wonderful video explaining a very complex issue💖
I still don't understand how this can be the problem, the FCC would have the documentation from the RF transceivers in the radio-altimeters...which would include what noise they can tolerate. If the specs were accurately supplied its a non-issue, if the airline industry wants more bandwidth held beyond that they should have bought the spectrum to keep it reserved. The way this has gone makes it sound like the airline industry just wants a free handout. 200MHz is an insane margin for bandpass filters to work in.
Boeing recommended 100mhz guard band and Japan has thousands of stations operating up to 4.1Ghz with no reported problems. The filter slope shown is the worst case found out of all models used, not the typical.
Until an airplane crashes due to very rare circumstances that lead to altimeter interference. Then everybody will tumble over the FAA how they could have ever approved that....
I will also note: 5g works just fine without C-band. There are a lot of frequencies to choose from, and consumer devices tend to support a very large number of them. I assume most carriers have multiple options as well. (T-mobile supports 5, and my pixel 5a supports about 12. Mutually, there are at least 2 options for my phone and my carrier, neither of which have these interference problems) 5G doesn't fundamentally need the potentially interfering frequencies, and the FCC's auctioning off frequencies in routine, safety-critical use despite the availability of alternatives is incompetence. The sensible decision, is to permanently allocate bands for radio altimeters, and shrink those bands if and when it is proven safe.
And that's without mentioning existing 3g and 4g networks, which are beyond sufficient for many applications provided coverage exists.
Hi Petter, I have recently discovered your channel - what an absolute joy - you are an amazing communicator. As a slightly nervous flyer, your channel is not the sort I would have imagined would hook me - but guess what you have done just that!! Thank you so very much, I look forward to watching many more.
Absolutely fantastic. Awesome! Haven’t heard you say it as much on the main Chan.
My understanding for the airplane mode onboard was that in the early days the towers themselves would have issues. Imagine a 747 flying in with ~800 phones on it and they all want to register on the mobile network tower at the same time. This would cause the software to reboot.
Wouldn't trains have the same problem?
@@Pfooh The difference between trains and planes is that signals from phones on a plane will hit multiple towers at the same time with approximately the same strength. Between that and the speed at which the plane is moving, the system can easily get overloaded.
Another big problem was with ships when they started including tracking beacons (like Airtags) in shipping containers. As the ship approached land, they all tried to register at about the same time. They had to change registration times to be random after they detected service was available.
The original problem with cell phones in airplanes was that the original AMPS system did not direct their antennas towards the ground, and one phone could light up as many as 10-20 towers at once. Since this was an analog signal, each phone tied up many frequencies, and caused capacity issues. The department who developed the network equipment for the prototype was in the same "lab" as my department in AT&T Bell Labs, essentially the next higher organizational level, and I knew a number of the people in that team. But, that's why airplane mode is a FCC regulation, and not a FAA regulation.
Modern tower antennas direct the RF to the subscribers on the ground, so the original issues largely don't exist, plus the equipment doesn't use 1A (proprietary AT&T processor), 8086 or 68000 processors any more, so they can handle more connections. But, these antennas may direct 5G signals to a landing plane.
The "Base Station overload" was the main issue. When I studied microwave engineering our professor told us that the flight mode never was about safety of the plane, but the service providers having issues with several hundred phones connecting to several base stations quickly one after the other, basically blocking the service on the ground. With planes starting or landing you can see the flight path in the network due to the overloaded base stations. Even though you have directed antennas, the perfect line of sight between plane/phones and base station gives this problem to actual high flight heights.
@@andremanicke8534 Interference with critical flight systems during critical phases of flight was also an issue. It wasn't just one problem that the phones potentially caused.
If the frequency is different, there is no reason for interference. So there can be no problem.
If aircraft altimeter receivers have a very wide input filter, they are POORLY DESIGNED and urgently need to be repaired.
"But aviation is special and we can't use anything that wasn't designed in the seventh century BCE because safety testing!"
very informative - as usual! Thank you for the explanation 👍
Thank you for watching! Great to hear that you liked it!
Really helpful visuals. Nice work.
This is a huge, huge flaw in aircraft. This system needs to be redesigned. If sending garbage over a certain frequency can crash an aircraft. It would be trivial for a bad actor to blast an aircraft with this frequency.
Theres other things u can do too
@@behindthen0thing yeah but I mean hooking a microwave transformer to an antenna (horn) is PRETTY cheap.
@@MDalton10 u can set off the Tcas as well with other equipment
@@behindthen0thing 20 bucks from home depot'?
@@MDalton10 almost
Nice explanation. As a radio receiver designer I can understand the FAA’s concern. The RA’s were never designed (or verified) to work in the presence of adjacent channel “blockers”. Given the mission critical aspect of RA’s play they should in fact be verified in an adjacent channel blocking environment. Blocking performance testing is an integral part of modern radio receiver designs. Just saying “hey they haven’t had a problem in Europe” is not a valid assumption. The FCC collected over $80 billion in auction sales. Just peel off some of that, maybe $2 billion, and let the avionics industry add the necessary linear phase filters to protect the RA’s from adjacent channel blockers.
The block the the FCC auctioned has always been a separate band. FCC testing ensures that out-of-band signals are not allowed to prevent normal operations, and 3.98GHz has always been out of band for RAs (assigned to another device class even if it wasn't being used very much). FCC testing and certification should have and would have included verifying that 3.98GHz signals would not interfere with any RA that was permitted by the FCC to be operated within the US (pretty much all of them). Unlike the FAA, the FCC actually takes its responsibilities seriously and all FCC device certification actually involves 3rd party testing by competent people. I've been through the process, and there is no leniency. if you're over a threshold, sucks to be you. Fix it and try again.
The aviation industry is practically blocking up to even 600 MHz for its RA band. How about THEY pay the 81bn that the telcos had to pay? Maybe Airbus and Boeing should simply make sure that their RA are working properly within their limits, and if they don't, upgrade them?
@@haukewalden2840 airbus and Boeing dont design the radar altimeters they just install them
Thanks for the mentour team.. very much required explanation...
Thank you so much!
As an IT guy I had hard time to understand WHY is 5g an issue from common news, since NONE of them mention frequency bands. Plus you explained it in very simple way. Appreciated.
It's not a 5g problem at all. If they put 4g up at 3.8 gHz they would be just as concerned. It's the use of that band that is an issue.
@@scottc858 Sure, some of frequency bands is/are issue. I haven't heard of anything wrong with the rest of the standard.
Technically I think a radio altimeter *is* radar. It’s the same as parking sensors in your car. They use radar as well; emitting a radio signal and timing the return of it, which is precisely what radar is; radio detection and ranging.
Parking sensors in cars use ultrasonic sound. Adaptive cruise control and automatic emergency braking systems use Radar.
Not sure what to think of the wording--the new 5G spectrum "is ONLY 202 MHz away from the Radio Altimeter spectrum" (6:35). 202 MHz is a LONG way. The entire global FM Radio spectrum is 20 MHz wide. I'm not a physicist, but I really struggle to understand how there's a possibility of meaningful interference across a frequency range 10x wider than the full FM band. 200KHz (0.2MHz) is usually enough separation to avoid interference between FM radio stations. We're talking about Interference across a gap 1000x greater than that! And there's been no interference from the prior (admittedly sparse) satellite usage of this same spectrum, has there? Hmmm. Any physicists or radio engineers care to comment?
I was hoping you would cover this. Thanks for the great explanation!
So happy you liked it!
If you ask, I listen!
Great explanation! Thanks, and shared!
Faa had had years to do to this research. Seems like they are stalling for some reason
Thinking about it it might also be a problem if someone with a 5G phone turns it on while the airplane is landing. Because the RBS might detect the connection and direct the beam on the direction of the phone which will radiate directly in the Airplane antenna.
Correct
Absolutely correct and, unfortunately, the full impact of such a scenario was not accounted in the 2020 study and series of interference tests. The cell towers are capable of launching 1,500 watts of ERP in the direction of an aircraft and, worse, tracking that aircraft while it flies, all the time the poor radar transceiver is trying to detect (and de-chirp) a signal in the microwatt range.
@@saratogapilot6100 Does the ground have that low an albedo in C-band? I thought the transmitter portion of the radio altimeter was in the watt range.
Your video production quality is now at another level. Well done.
This is an excellent explanation of the problem. The graphics are fantastic. I understand it now!
So my big questions are, why is the notch so HUGE as to potentially receive interference from a signal 220Mhz away? And considering who rules the radio waves, is out of band interference really the FCC's fault when the legal band for radio altimeters stops at 4.2Ghz? Don't get me wrong, I used to operate a certain data link that operates below, in between and above 1030Mhz and 1090Mhz so I know all about how the FAA cracks down on *potential* interference. I'm just trying to grasp why any piece of radio or radar equipment needs a notch that, well, gigantic.
That "legal band" is the transmit band. It is the receiver that is at issue.
@@Markle2k still doesn't answer why 220Mhz is necessary or even acceptable in our RF saturated world. Yes, aviation safety is critical, I'm not arguing that. But just like cell providers and other RF users must be good neighbors to adjacent bands, so to does aviation. And if 220Mhz separation is insufficient, I don't think it's 5G that's the problem.
@@ABFox To redesign and certify the radio altimeters and then implement the fix would take years and cost tens, hundreds, possibly billions of dollars. These systems have to be certified, not just by themselves, but for each model of aircraft they are installed in. The FAA wasn't given the time to properly investigate the issue. Then, who is going to pay for the possible upgrades?
When some of these systems were first put in, 2G wasn't even a thing. Were the engineers supposed to forecast decades into the future new technologies that weren't even using any bands near that of the radio altimeters?
@@Markle2k understood but still doesn't cover my question as to a. Why is the receive notch so huge and b. Why is it the cell companies and FCC being portrayed as the bad guys when it's the FAA and radio altimeter designers who are operating (yes only on the receive side) grossly out of band?
I've crunched the numberson the doppler shift one would expect and it was negligible. Were talking single digit shifts. You throw in spill over, and I'm still not seeing anything close to 220Mhz, from the radio altimeter or the 5G transmitters. I have seen the notch diagrams released from the studies and I have glanced over them and she it says that it could interfere, but not WHY the notch is so massive.
@@ABFox Because the notch was fine back in 1826 when radio was this scary thing people thought would blow up heads, and the airplane industry doesn't want to actually upgrade anything ever. If you're requiring bands outside yours to be quiet, you're in the wrong. That's how it works for *everyone* using radio.
One would sure hope that a 5G antenna won't beam signals in such a way that they would confuse radio altimeters. But if it has focused on a customer that, say, is in a skyscraper, it could (an aircraft getting in the way could also interfere with the customer's signal as well). At the least these 5G antenna systems, I would think as an engineer, ought to incorporate aircraft avoidance for their signals: if the customer is on the opposite side of an aircraft traffic lane from the antenna, the 5G system should use an antenna on the opposite side of the aircraft traffic lane. There could be another factor in how these altimeter signals work, as (from another report) rather than calculating delay directly, they send a swept burst of frequencies and the altimeter receiver looks for what frequency has returned when. Therefore a random 5G signal might be harmless for it won't include a radio altimeter frequency at all. But the engineers aren't communicating well about this, it seems, to make a pun. Aircraft navigational system engineers are right to be quite careful about this until 5G is exonerated. Conscientious engineers would be trying on purpose to replicate worst case hypotheses and seeing what the systems actually do in these situations.
If the radar altimeters are pulsed then detecting and shifting is not easy. If all the altimeter manufacturers knew that they were going to have a bunch of moderately powerful transmitters only 300 MHz away they could have designed them with better technology. It seems obvious that FAA has discovered that at least some altimeters do handle 5G alright.
The problem is that politicians want FCC to pull in as much money as possible as quickly as possible, so F safety testing. It is a world leading country that thinks like a third world country. Sigh.
Generally you build these in sectors each with a downtilt of 5° or more and a beam width of 30° or narrower. So very little signal goes "up".
Finally some explained it! Thank you!!
Thank you for explaining this. I kept reading about this problem but I didn't understand what the exact problem was.
Most people don't understand that new tech in aviation take years or decades of testing to make sure it's safe. You can't expect that the FAA can test all the Radio Altimeter modules in just one year. I would rather be safe flying that have faster mobile Internet.
They've had 10+ years.
This has been forseeable for a decade or more. A lack of planning on aviation's part is not a crisis for telecommunications. Stop blaming other industries for your incompetence.
200 MHz between 5G and the radar altimeters is absolutely enormous. Nobody else would get even close to a guard band that size. The airline industry got 10 times the guard band other industries beg for and still complain.
The FCC can't be responsible for people using bad receivers. If I have a crappy radio that is my problem, not the governments. The FCC has concluded that a radar altimeter should have no problems being able to handle 5G interference. If someone has a radar that is horribly built that is their problem, not AT&Ts.
We are talking about extremely valuable spectrum that cost ten billion to buy and investments far greater than that the the FAA wants to halt so a few radars built with 1950s tech don't have to be upgraded. This is like demanding to have a golf course on Manhattan
Great graphics. They really help with understanding this.
Very informative video, thank you!
I am VERY glad you are doing this - you are someone I can rely on to tell the story without bias. I am technically proficient in the RF world and must say that your explanation was brilliant in it's simplicity!
I'll add that even if the filtering design on the front end of the radio altimeter could keep the 5G data stream out of the altimeter's circuits, there is another phenomenon called 'swamping' where the power of the interfering signal could override the circuitry anyway.
Aviation's concerns about 5G seem to be well founded...
Personally, I'm skeptical...I'm old enough to remember when there was fear that ANY electronic devices on a plane would cause it to crash. Not only have we gotten past that fear without anything changing in technology, we are now allowed to use wi-fi on our electronic devices during flight. So I'm going to restrain my panic until I see solid test data that shows a scientifically tested, proven, and repeatable detrimental interference that would cause disastrous outcomes.
Thank you for covering this. However, Blancolirio covered it before and explained really well that radar altimeters on planes are sending signals at 1 (one) Watt. Honestly everybody flying should be concerned about the proximity of 5G until otherwise stated and assured.
Yeah, Juan has some great content. This is more of a technical overview than going in deep on details. The video would have been much longer then 😂
As I understand the radio signals aren't that clear cut and can create harmonics at nearby frequences.
@@OrbitalCookie That is exactly where the problem may be, I’m not expert in this, but Blancolirio explains this better.
@@OrbitalCookie not harmonics, spurious emissions perhaps (but these are unlikely to be measurably significant due to type approval requirements). The problem is "front end overload" and "receiver desensitisation". It's not "co-channel interference" because it's not co-channel.
The fundamental problem is that these RADALTs designed in the 1980's are dangerously under engineered from a radio perspective. And the airline industry persists with using these obsolete designs.
This is an excellent explanation of the subject matter. No use comparing it with Juans.
It would be interesting for you to do a video on times where things didn’t go as you expected! Great videos 👍🏼
I am a retired business traveler, who has heard the admonition many times about putting our devices in Airplane Mode. But no one ever explained why it was important! So many times while flying, I was very irritated by being told something, without being told why. I feel that airlines inadvertently add to passenger stress by not simply telling the passengers what is happening, and why. I think many passengers would be MUCH more understanding and cooperative if they just knew what was actually happening.
FAA says to Verizon and AT&T: "Can you hear me now?"
Sounds like everyone has now gotten the 5G message concerns...
I'm glad that the issue is being addressed ✈
Flight safety trumps 5G coms. Let's try this: for the 30-ish airports able to use autoland, let's get the ability to shutdown 5G in the LZ when weather demands autoland. 5G subscribers will fall back to 4G, and the experience will not be worse than "wow, man, slow signal - must be the weather." Meanwhile, autoland will rock without potential interference. Conditions like this are regional and usually last only a few hours. Best thing - we usually know we'll in advance, and can mitigate with help from the carriers. Let's do this.
I think it's stupid. The FCC promised aviation a slice of spectrum, and they gave it to them. It's Airbus' fault for refusing to use a high quality RF filter and it's their fault for listening back on other frequencies.
They should have just assumed tons of noise on spectrum not allocated to them.
This is like someone being mad because they like to park their car half way in the neighbor's spot and the neighbor wasn't using it, and then a new owner came and asked you to stop. You can't just say "Well I bought a semi truck because I knew I could do this so since that's the car I have it's my right."
It's not the responsibility.
Also, 5G-4G handoff is a huge issue, and not really feasible. It CAN be done safely, if Airbus and Boeing spent an extra $8 on making the radioalt's within spec... Even consumer RF filters perform an order of magnitude better than the 1950's tech they STILL want to keep using in brand new aircraft... It was only last year that Airbus finally updated the sensors.
As an engineer, I can see how this is an issue, but since the aviation industry is the one who is non-compliant and they're sensing spectrum outside of what they were promised and assigned, I don't think first-come first-serve works here.
Airbus and Boeing could have rectified this 3 decades ago when they first saw the potential issue, and can still rectify it now in as little as 2 months.
@@pilotavery your assertion: "first come..." doesn't work is irrelevant. The regs state that new services shall not interfere with existing services. As an engineer, you already know this but think it's unfair.
The way to resolve this is not by upgrading the fleet with new radios, but to think around the problem...outside the box. The need is discontinuous, so many other solutions are possible from a small bit of code in a Software Defined Radio in a 5G cell tower that recognizes a radio altimeter ping and shuts down its transmitter at the well-known rep-rate of the altimeter (as suggested by another commenter), to a simple "shut down 5G near airports when the weather turns funky."
And 5G to 4G fall back - my phone does that automatically all the time. It's built in.
@Will Smith 5g to 4g fallback drops calls unless there's a proper handoff.
At the end of the day, the FCC asked the aviation industry how much of a buffer they need, (guard bandwidth) the FAA and the aviation industry says they needed 100mhz. So the FCC gave them 200mhz extra for free. If they want the extra frequency, they should have bought the frequencies at the auction like everyone else does. People purchased that spectrum. FCC was already generous by providing 200mhz extra for free.
The aviation industry got the spectrum they asked for and more, and they are not entitled to use more spectrum unless they pay for it. They know that those frequencies, while not being used, was not licensed to them, and for a decade, they've known it was about to be used.
It would also work for Airbus to modify the code on their SDR's that manage radioalt too.
Why does the burden fall on the telecoms industry, when they paid good money for this spectrum, and at the end of the day, Airlines want to make decisions about spectrum they did not pay for, because they wanted to save a buck on the equipment.
Cell phone equipment has very sharp filters to prevent them from interfering with nearby allocations of spectrum.
Again, this is 100% the airlines fault, and if the airlines don't want to fix it, they should be willing to purchase the spectrum or pay damages to telecoms to manage it.
@@willsmith4950 It doesn't even effect all planes, only a very very select few models from Boeing that cheaped out, along with many older planes with certifications from 1960's.
Just because they have been using spectrum they aren't licensed to doesn't mean they can keep doing it.
Just because you've been using the vacant driveway next door doesn't mean the owner isn't allowed to stop you. Especially since... The airlines are at fault...
@@willsmith4950 Technically, the airlines are at fault since those tight-wads didn't properly test their equipment. If they interfere, then they're by definition out-of-spec, and they just didn't catch it in testing. Because technically they only need the spectrum they were assigned. Like, the 787 and most Airbus all are not effected so...
One of the best and concise explanations of the issue. Thanks
Another amazing explanation Mentour
Very good explanation of a complex problem. As I was watching, it occurred to me that since the tower RF beam is directional, it should not be a problem- unless, as you stated, the passengers have their phones turned on, which in this day and age of “don’t tell me what to do “, is a near certainty. However, the cell tower operators should, in theory, be able to limit the beam to only “downward directed”, especially if near an airport. Furthermore, it would be in principle fairly easy for cell operators detect altimeter pings and temporary disable the 5G system. I guess we wouldn’t want to trust our lives to cell operators. Finally, I don’t understand how many other countries have implemented 5G without mishap- what’s missing?
What you explained is similar to the lower 5GHz WiFi band that relies on scanning for aircraft weather radar and dynamically switches on or off. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_frequency_selection
If you ask what's missing, I think the cooperation between these two government agencies was missing. This issue is not unsolvable (tests and improvements can be done, a bigger "buffer zone" could have been created around the airports without the use of these 5G freqs...). Reason why it's an issue there and not elsewhere is the new frequency band used. Large part of 5G frequencies are overlapping with previously exisitng LTE coverage and are far enough from altimeter freq to not be an issue. But there are some new 5G frequency bands, not used before, and this is one of the cases. Maybe it is not going to have negative effects, maybe it is, anyway FAA is right to be super-cautious when it comes to safety. And regarding temporary disabling 5G system when altimeter ping is detected... I doubt any operator would be happy about having that kind of feature if they have spend bilions of dollars on deploying 5G in the first place. Plus, would you trust such feature ;) ?
@@BettyChaos Like they say, "follow the money"...
I don't get the issue, the radio spetrum is devided into channels, so if the radio altimiter is so porely designed that it can't discriminate between it's assigned channels and adjacent channels then the problem is with the altiminater design. This problem is clearly on the aviation side; if aircraft have to be grounded until theit altimiter is fixed, so be it. That will focus industry attention on fixing the problem they've crated; it's the price paid for cost cutting in the original design. In terms of flying I only have glider/sailplane experince but, before moving to Colorado, I had a British Ham Radio Licence. My personal take is that if planes have to be grounded until their altimiter are fixed, then so be it.
Blame the victim is your solution?
@Carl Menger How are the planes causing the problem with the radio altimeter possibly not reporting the correct altitude above the terrain?
You are assuming that the designers of the radio altimeters should have perfect foresight into the telecommunications industry decades in advance. If they had that, they would be in the wrong business. They should have been on Wall Street or in the City of London running a financial enterprise.
@Carl Menger So, this thing works as designed for fifty years and is now at fault because another thing comes along and makes it malfunction. Yeah, that makes sense.
@@Markle2k Firstly your designation of 'victim' is presumptive, an argument can be made that the telco's (as much as I destest them in general) are the victim. My argument is about the technologies involved. I'm pointing out that Adjacent Channel intererence is a well known problem that sould pre-date any equipment still in use today, If the equipment was designed properly then it would be able to filter out frequencies outside its allocated band and this woludn't be an issue. THere is this quiant concept called a Band Pass Filter designed explcilty to address this issue.
@@raysutton2310 It isn’t presumptive at all. If you view the level of “victimhood” on a relative scale, the airlines and their passengers are undoubtedly more victims than the telcos. The telcos said, “we want this” without regard to the effects that their implementations would have on other users of nearby users. The effect is that you could find that your flight could sometimes have to land hundreds of miles from your intended destination.
Who is going to pay for you and your fellow passengers to get to your destination on a less safe means of transport? Who would pay for the radio altimeters to be “upgraded and certified? Who is going to pay for this certification and the capital outlay for this new equipment? And how do you balance this inconvenience over the time that it will require to certify the new equipment (and the flight delays and cancellations) against the marginal decrease in download speeds for a movie/TV show that you want to watch on your phone on your commute?
Excellent explanation as always!
I was about to ask you to make a video about this since there is different information coming from the States and Europe ... Thank you very much!🖖
The FAA knew about the 5G rollout timeline for *2 years* and yet never even started the process of certifying altimeters, then started spreading FUD about planes falling out of the sky on the eve of the rollout.
Btw, they did a U-turn last week and cleared the majority of planes.
The FAA isn't looking even halfway competent in this story.
✔Correct .
I understand the problem here. Of course aircraft safety comes as top priority here as opposed to people being able to make phone calls on the ground. I suggest using only 4G transmitters within 10 miles of an airport and 5G elsewhere. I know it’s a bit of a trade off for the telecommunications corporations, but until this is completely understood, aircraft safety comes first, shareholders second.
Very very neatly explained... Thank you, captain!!
Great video and I love the new look👍🏻
What angers me is in Europe they used a different frequency to avoid this issue. Here in the US the Telecom people were warned this would be an issue a few years ago and in fact it was stopped at one point. Follow the money on this one. See who in the FCC is getting paid off on this.
Ajit Pai allegedly profited from it.
Okay, but why were so many radio altimeters designed out of spec? Is it really telecom's fault that other devices can't cope with the EMI they receive on frequencies outside their allotted band?
@@tissuepaper9962 they are not designed out of specification. The 5G frequency is to close to the tolerances they are allowed. Europe used a different frequency and there are no issues. Not sure why we allowed this to happen despite the protests of the FAA. The news is pretending that this is a new issue that just came up but it is not.
@@johnmajane3731 define "too close". In Japan the guard band is narrower by half. Receiving interference outside your specified band and not being able to filter it out is literally "not being designed to spec", there's no way around it. FAA approved radalts that were out of spec because (inexplicably) they thought nobody would be using the nearby bands that weren't allotted to radalts. That's a failure of FAA, not a failure of FCC or telecom companies.
@@tissuepaper9962 to close means it is close enough in frequency to interfere with the radar altimeters. The radar altimeters meet the specifications. This did not have to happen. The telecom people and the FCC were aware of the issue. But they went forward with it anyways. The media and telecom people are acting like this is a new issue it is not. This has been going on for years but greed has overcome safety. They handled it in Europe just fine and should have done the same here. Remember it could be your son or daughter who dies in a plane crash if this is allowed to happen.
The airline industry knew about this for 10 years when these bands started being evaluated and carved up, they chose to do nothing. Your video implies this issue started a year ago.
You know the airlines, they won't do anything until enough people die, then they will act. They've proven this with most of the airline disasters and them not fixing the problem until 2 or more accidents happen. I would assume this is the same.
As a person with 40 years of experience in telecommunications engineering I believe there are software only fixes that the manufacturers of 5G equipment could make to eliminate this risk. However the bottom line here is, as always, MONEY. Who is going to pay to fix those radar altimeters which are in violation of their operating licence from the FCC? From the point of view of the FCC anybody who makes a device which transmits or receives signals outside of its licensed frequency range MUST cease operation until they bring their equipment into compliance or face a fine or injunction. But the manufacturers of that equipment see the billions of dollars paid for the C-Band licenses and feel that the guys with the biggest bank accounts should pay. I do not understand why Boeing and Airbus are leading this because their aircraft surely already have the newest and most expensive radar altimeter, and they only have a few thousand aircraft that could need minor maintenance. But what about all of the smaller aircraft, particularly helicopters, which may be using radar altimeters that are decades old and grandfathered by the regulations?
@@jamescobban857 If you have 40 years of experience, you should know that the FCC does not regulate receive equipment, and there is no such rule that says you must stop using equipment that receives unwanted signals.
I saw this news and was waiting for you to cover it. 😄
Such an interesting video. Just finished a 13 hours shift, but I wouldn't miss it for anything. You never disappoint Captain. Thank you for sharing.
You say ONLY 220MHz apart. I am a licensed ham radio operator, and for us 220MHz gap is a huge gap. E.g. our 145 MHz repeater stations receive and transmit simultaneously and the receiving an transmitting frequencies are only 0,6 MHz apart! Good filtering on the receivers front end makes it possible. So in principle it should be possible to add a front end filter system to the receiving end of the radio altimeter with as we call it sharper bandpass filter edges. However I understand that the receiver of the radio altimeter has to be very sensitive in order to receive the very weak radio reflections from the ground. So that is why they probably did not add any filter to the receiver back in the days when there were hardly any transmissions on or near those frequencies back then.
The problem isn't frequency allocation. If a handheld consumer device can bandpass it's own frequencies better than critical safety equipment in radio altimeters.. what does that say about the critical safety equipment? Fix old planes, simple as that
Great job explaining 👏
Thank you so much for explaining this so regular people can understand it.
This would be an entirely reasonable concern... if they worried about this 5 years ago. You know: when 5G was in development. In actual fact, this is probably political.
_"This is an example of how the FAA will not allow any type of risk"_ - This is an example of how the FAA is utterly incompetent to test a couple of altimeters, even when having 2 years to do it.
Probably managed to run a couple of inclusivity programs and some logo updates though.
Pilots are honestly the most responsible, knowledgeable and down to earth people I know. Thank you
Great explaination. Thaniks